The Birthday of Eternity

"Madame Restell" (Ann Trow Lohman), 
died April 1, 1878

On the morning of April 1, 1878, a maid discovered Madame Restell in the bathtub at her Fifth Avenue home; she had slit her own throat with a pearl-handled knife. She was sixty-seven years old.

Madame Restell / Ann Trow Lohman

Anthony Comstock had visited Madame Restell two times in January 1878, purportedly to obtain contraceptive powders for his wife. 

Anthony Comstrock

On his third visit on February 7th, he came accompanied by the police, deputies, and reporters from the World and the Tribune.  Under a state law of 1875,  he produced a warrant to search the premises and seize any articles for miscarriage or the prevention of conception. After searching the entire house, they seized what was inventoried as "15 bottles of a ruby-colored medicine, 100 boxes of white pills, 500 packages of powders, 250 circulars, 3 syringes, and 10 dozen condoms."

Illustration of Comstock and Restell on February 7th

Restell was indicted, and her trial date was set for April 1, 1878.

In the interval between her arrest and her trial, on the advice of former judge and attorney Orlando Stewart, she had taken down the sign affixed to her building. In a statement indicating her own role in provoking the attacks upon her, when asked why she was persecuted, she replied, "They are envious because I have such a fine house in such a splendid location."  Through early March, she was in and out of the Tombs as various legal proceedings took place, the court going out of its way to be as punitive and uncompromising as possible as the gleeful press looked on.

Restell's Mansion on Firth Avenue

Although she could afford the best attorneys, Madame Restell was quite alone in the world. Her husband had died in January, 1877.  She was estranged from her daughter, who had married a policeman. Although her granddaughter, Caroline, had been her assistant, she too had married. Madame Restell wasn't assured of escaping imprisonment. The newspapers had a field day, denouncing her on a daily basis and gloating that she was finally going to get her due.

While courtroom observers gathered for the trial on April 1, 1878, they waited in vain. Rumors swept through the courtroom when Restell did not appear at the appointed time. It being April 1st, however, Anthony Comstock, like many others, dismissed rumors of her suicide as a joke.

At 5 PM, a coroner's jury was impaneled in Restell's bedroom adjacent to the bath. In addition to touring the house, reporters were allowed to view the remains which lay in an ice-chest in a small reception room north of the parlor-floor hallway. After hearing testimony, touring the house, and viewing the body, the jury reached a verdict of death by suicide.   When the jury viewed the remains, it was reported "When the black pall was drawn back, Ann Lohman's features seemed calm, kindly, and youthful, her bloodless face white as marble, her dark brown hair faintly tinged with gray, her throat traversed by a thin red line."

The next morning, in addition to detailed descriptions of the sumptuous house interior, the newspapers editorialized.  "A fit ending to an odious career," announced the Times; while the Tribune, declaring the "end of sin is death" labeled her suicide as an admission of guilt.   Only the Sun was generous, "whatever she was, she had her rights, and the man who cunningly led her into the commission of misdemeanor acted an unmanly and ignoble part." 

When Comstock heard of her suicide he called it "a bloody ending to a bloody life." Comstock denied any wrongdoing and justified his entrapment as necessary and defensible. His Society for the Suppression of Vice hailed the closing of her practice and insisted that the Society's agent had in no way seduced Restell into committing a crime.

Madame Restell was buried in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Tarrytown, New York.

Restell's Grave

Upon her death, her fortune was claimed to have been worth between $500,000-$600,000 ($11.9 million-$14.3 million in present-day terms.)